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My friend's meals usually look like grass, sawdust or animals feed. She would instead have a rattlesnake than a preservative or ingredient in her cupboard, and she considers people that consume steak, french fries and hot-fudge sundaes only a bit less loathsome than serial killers. Her house terme conseillé with obscure herbs and teas, and in the girl mason jars something is forever in some period of sprouting. She is a Joan of Arc of the organic, a health-food zealot. I appreciate her purity, and yet...

I can't help considering of the scene in Sleeper when Woody Allen wakes up in the next century to find that scientists have learned the only healthful food is a hot-fudge sundae. Sometimes, I admit, I actually hope something like this could happen and my buddy will get her comeuppance - if only because then I won't feel so guilty about my Fritos.

So I was secretly relieved to learn that the relationship dźwigi samochodowe between food and longevity is not as clear-cut as my buddy imagines. A couple of decades ago, Bruce Ames, professor of chemistry and molecular biology at the University of California at Berkely, started wondering about the long set of artificial chemicals in a handbag of poker chips. Did these things cause cancer? At the time, tests for carcinogenicity were long and expensive, involving hundreds of laboratory rats and years of observation.

From the earlier '70s, Ames developed a faster and cheaper test: He'd toss a compound into a test tubing of bacteria and see whether it caused mutations. If this did, the compound was possibly carcinogenic. Their now-famous Ames Test cautioned of the perils of thousands of man-made chemicals in such products as food, hair dyes and the flame retardant Collections. Sometimes, the suspect chemicals were banned.

A ten years later, Ames had cause to reconsider his viewpoint. When he and other scientists started out testing a host of Mother Nature's products - including plums, apples, Brussels sprouts, radishes, raspberries, grapefruit juice, honeydew melon, celery, parsley, powdered cocoa, carrots, red wine, rhubarb, beets, fava beans, pineapples and black pepper - they found that these things, too, looked ominously carcinogenic. Now Ames, no longer the darling of environmentalists, estimates that 99. 99 percent of the pesticides in our diets come from natural sources. Due to the fact 50 % of both natural and synthetic chemicals are carcinogenic, we can't disregard the danger natural chemicals in our food present.

Healthy Suspects

How much time can be spent worrying? Really does every visit to the supermarket require a convention of experts waving sheaves of citations? After a while, everything appears to be bad for you, including what used to be good for you, like eggs and dźwigi samochodowe meats - and now vegetables. To add to the confusion, while exerts like Ames are noticing that everything natural isn't always benevolent, others are obtaining unexpected virtues in some "junk" foods.

Consider a few "good" foods that might be bad:

Natural Food

My friend's typical holier-than-thou salad is full of vegetables from the organic and natural food mart, which guarantees they are untouched by any agricultural technique developed by since Neolithic times. No pesticides, for sure. "Organic food may be more dangerous than Safeway food, " says Ames. "When plants get pressured [e. g., by attacks of critters] they make more of the natural pesticides. inch These, he says, may be more toxic than any DDT residues which may slide into our diets. Furthermore, the salad contains:

Basil. This salad dressing element contains estragole, another natural pesticide. The salad also contains...
Raw Mushrooms. They may organic, of course - and "full of dangerous, " including natural pesticides called hydrazines, Ames states. Drinking apple juice with Alar is about one fiftieth as hazardous to health as eating one mushroom. Chances are her salad is looking quite positivelly dangerous, considering the...
Mold. Read that right, the mold on organic and natural nuts, cheese wedges and apple slices harbors a number of carcinogens, according to Ames's studies. Last, but not least, behold the very symbol of small-planet, whole-earth eating...
Alfalfa sprouts. Our friend tosses these liberally into every salad and sandwich, little suspecting they contain natural toxins that Ames says cause the disease lupus in monkeys. Of course , the monkey's diets were 40 percent alfalfa seedlings, more than any human being health nut could possibly eat, but let all of us stop worshipping sprouts.

Other staples of a virtuous regimen are also concern:

Cabbage and broccoli. These types of contain substances that, in the stomach, transform into a natural chemical related to dioxin, the deadly herbicide in Agent Lemon, based on Ames. On the other hand, broccoli, like many vegetables, also includes anticarcinogens that may or might not exactly cancel out the carcinogens.
Comfrey tea. Lord knows, no caffeine would ever touch my good friend's lips. She gets all her highs (as well as her tranquility) from herbal teas. Unfortunately, comfrey tea contains a carcinogenic natural pesticide, symphytine, based on Ames.
Corn, nuts, grain, fruit, bread, peanut rechausser and apple juice. Almost all contain potentially carcinogenic molds, Ames says.
Margarine. Given that the unfortunate thing broke about saturated fats and coronary heart disease, no health lover would dream of sloshing butter on her seven-grain toast. Now it seems polyunsaturated fats improve the oxidation process rate of cells and therefore create more "free foncier, " those unstable, removed down molecules many scientists believe blur your GENETICS, hasten aging and cause cancer.